Space Is The Place: Canadian astronaut sings Bowie's 'Space Oddity'

Dan DeLuca

Music Critic

Dan DeLuca is an Inquirer pop music critic. But his "In the Mix" column in the Weekend section ventures further afield, into books, movies, TV, the Internet, graphic novels and anything you might call "popular culture."

Yesterday, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted a video of himself singing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" as he and his guitar floated around the International Space Station.

Planet earth is blue, and there's nothing he can do, except make viral videos that truly are out of this world. As he prepared to return home at the end of his mission, Commander Hadfield wrote: "Almost time to leave Station. Hard to express all of my emotions, but mostly gratitude. I came here on behalf of so many people - thank you." (His Twitter feed is here.) The papers want to know whose shirts he wears, and Bowie himself was impressed, pushing the caps lock key to tweet: CHRIS HADFIELD SINGS SPACE ODDITY IN SPACE! “Hallo Spaceboy...”

(Hadfield is also the shutterbug who has been posting photos of earth - and more importantly, Philadelphia - from space. Check out some of those shots here.)

Meantime, French electronic duo Daft Punk's highly anticipated album Random Access Memories comes out next Tuesday. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo are also in a spaceship, complete with a turntable, in the video they released today to tease the album. But they're only pretending, I think. They lose points for not actually shooting their video in space. Nonetheless, check the teaser out below, below the more truly interstellar Hadley clip.